Monday, October 04, 2010

"It's a happy ending for this funnyman! Life & Style can exclusively reveal that actor and writer Seth Rogen, 28, has proposed to his longtime girlfriend, writer and actress Lauren Miller, also 28."He surprised her with the proposal," a friend of Seth's tells Life & Style. "She'd started giving up hope that he would ever pop the question." Seth asked Lauren - whom he's been dating since 2004 - to be his bride just last week, after the two returned from visiting family in Boston. "Her family adores him; everyone is thrilled to plan a wedding," the friend adds. As for Seth, there's no doubt as to how he feels about Lauren: "I have a girlfriend who is far prettier than I should have," he's said." Source: wwww.huffingtonpost.com

Sunday, October 03, 2010

Jake Gyllenhaal talks about "Love and other drugs" at The 2010 New Yorker Festival on 2nd October 2010

"Jake Gyllenhaal sat down with David Denby at SVA Theater 1 last night to discuss his past films and his newest, "Love and Other Drugs." Denby said that the scenes between Gyllenhaal and his love interest, played by Anne Hathaway, were "electrifying." "You may do for straight sex what you did for gay sex," he said.Jake Gyllenhaal and Gemma Arterton in "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time" (2010)

"Gyllenhaal, twenty-nine, has played lovers to many. He took a moment to reflect on movie kissing and sex. "There is a weird sense of being watched," he said. "You can't help but watch yourself, which takes the sexiness out of it."

Ed Zwick, who directed the film, was also on hand, providing fortune-cookie insights into some of the darkest mysteries of Hollywood, a faraway land where "casting is love" and "sex is funny."

Asked what's in store for the future, Gyllenhaal admitted to having other interests. "Paul Newman is someone who I admire," he says. "I think I could make a really good salad dressing, too." Source: www.newyorker.com

"FIVE decades after her death, Marilyn Monroe emerged in her own words yesterday as a suicidal, inadequate and thoughtful woman who feared losing her mind.

Her private writings, to be published for the first time, also show the late star to have been an avid reader who quotes John Milton and Sigmund Freud as she despairs over her loneliness.

The actress's voice comes over clearly in Fragments, a collection of notes, letters and poems that were left to Lee Strasberg, her acting guru, on her death in Los Angeles in 1962 at the age of 36.

Le Nouvel Observateur, the French news weekly, published extracts from the papers, which were edited by Bernard Comment, a Swiss writer, and Stanley Buchthal, their current owner. The English edition is to be published on October 14 by HarperCollins.

Monroe's mental turmoil and literary aspirations are well-known. But her own vivid accounts of her inner life, from teenage years to a time close to her death, bring home how far the real woman was from the dumb blond she portrayed in her films.

"Why do I feel this torture?" she scribbled in a diary in 1955, according to the French translation. "Or why is it that I feel less human than the others (always felt in a certain way that I am subhuman, why in other words, I am the worst, why?) Even physically, I have always been sure that something was not right with me."

In 1958, under psychoanalysis and after the failure of her marriage to Arthur Miller, the playwright, she writes: "Help, help, help. I feel life approaching when all that I want is to die." Miller is the only person in her life she trusted as much as herself, she confides in her notebook.

In another undated fragment, she describes her desperation on a film set. "I am tired. I am searching for a way to play this role. My whole life has always depressed me. How can I play such a gay girl, young and full of hope?"

As a rising star in the early 1950s, she wrote verses about her solitude. "I am alone. I am always alone, whatever happens . . . " Source: www.heraldsun.com.au

"William Travilla is best known for dressing Marilyn Monroe for eight of her films and this exhibition showcases five prototypes of these dresses, alongside two dresses designed for Marilyn for personal appearances.

'The White Dress', from the film 7 Year Itch (1955) is likely to be the most famous dress he ever made for Marilyn Monroe.

On display is an identical copy made by William Travilla during her lifetime from the original pattern, as the dress worn in the film is owned by actress Debbie Reynolds". Source: www.bbc.co.uk

Marilyn Monroe and Lauren Bacall, co-stars in "How to Marry a Millionaire" (1953)

"How to Marry a Millionaire earned an Academy Award nomination for Color Costume Design for 20th Century-Fox wardrobe director Charles LeMaire, a 16-time Academy Award nominee and winner for All about Eve, The Robe and Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing, and Travilla (William "Bill" Travilla), a four-time Oscar nominee and winner for The Adventures of Don Juan. Travilla was also known for designing Monroe's costumes.nowhere near as broad as she was in Blondes, Monroe here is just a more sentimental version of the same type, and the part doesn't add up to much more than blonde window dressing. Bacall has the serious audience sympathy, and Gable the biggest heart, so this was exactly the kind of part Monroe so desperately wanted to flee".Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe in "Gentlemen prefer blondes" (1953)

"Blondes is immediately recognizable as a Hawks film for a number of reasons pointed out by Robin Wood in his essays from 30 years ago. The glib toughness is there, with the unspoken understanding that the girls are 'professionals'. They're proud of their man-killing, just like Hawks' soldiers or fliers are. They have an impromptu sing-along number at a Paris cafe, also very Hawksian. Russell even delivers her lines similarly to Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not". Source: www.dvdtalk.com

Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in "To have and to have not" (1944)

Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe

Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in "Sabrina" (1954)Audrey Hepburn wearing a dress designed by Cristóbal Balenciaga.

"Gyllenhall’s character, Jamie Randall, is a philanderer and smooth talker who doesn’t live up to his millionaire brother, or physician father and sister. Hathaway plays Maggie Murdoch, whose early Parkinson’s diagnosis drives her to fear her own mortality and to push people from her life.“I didn’t want to do a standard romantic comedy, something that was contrived so it was about finding the right story,” Zwick said. “And more than that, it was about finding the right actors.”Though audiences have seen powerful performances from Gyllenhaal, such as his Oscar-nominated performance in Brokeback Mountain, Zwick thinks he’s still coming into his prowess as an actor.“There is a moment in every actor’s life when those things come together,” he said. “There is a moment in every young man’s life, not necessarily when you’re 24 or 28. Sometimes you have to get a three in front of their age before everything starts to function and they fire on all cylinders. I think it’s happening and very abundant and clear in the film.”Jake Gyllenhaal as Jamie Randall and Anne Hathaway as Maggie Murdock in "Love and other drugs" (2010)

Though billed as a romantic comedy, the film does exactly what Zwick wants and detours from typical contrived conventions, and detours into more serious territory as the bond between Gyllenhaal and Hathaway’s characters deepens. Zwick credits life as inspiration for their performances.“Everyone goes through things. Annie had this relationship that was traumatic.Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal dining in Paris, France on 14th March 2009

Jake was deeply in love with someone that had two children and it ended, and these things mark you. They have an effect on your soul and your instrument, and it’s happened to both of them.”“When I was 30, I got married,” Zwick said. “And within two weeks, my mother died. I think it pertains to this movie, that is has the word and in it. Sometimes the best thing happens, but the worst thing happens as well. It’s not just — it’s and.” Source: blastmagazine.com